


let me lay waste to thee

by Byacolate



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Anniversary, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, First Date, For Unhealthy Folks, Healthy Relationships, Long-Distance Relationship, Murder, Smitten Jack, affection erection, also sort of, murderers in love, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 12:29:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5004853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byacolate/pseuds/Byacolate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"See, now I'm gonna have to buy you a rocket just to spite you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	let me lay waste to thee

“Aww.” She toes at Tassiter’s lolling head with her boot, her lips curled in an artistic moue. “I called dibs, y’know.”

 

Jack shuts off the comm to Tassiter’s befuddled secretary and swipes a hand through his hair. “Yeah? When was that?”

 

“Eh. Sometime between that time he tried to convince me to get you fired and his last breath.”

 

“He wanted you to get me fired? Again? Double-fired? What a shithead.”

 

“You just choked him out on his office floor.”

 

Jack pushes the ignore button when the secretary attempts another call. “Touché.”

 

Nisha cocks her hip to the side and smirks. “I’m kinda into that.”

 

“Yeah?” he says. Again. He resists the urge to double-check his fitted mask, occupies himself with melting the frantically ringing comm system on the late Tassiter’s desk with an ion beam instead. Nisha doesn’t even flinch. If anything, her smile widens into intrigue. Hunger.  

 

“So,” says Jack, drawing the word out as he eases around the desk, neck-wringing hands behind his back. “You wanna go not get that drink?”

 

 

* * *

 

They don’t get drinks. And then they do, when it‘s not a prelude to anything they haven‘t done before. There’s a little bar in the Hub of Heroism that clears out the moment he sets foot inside. The Claptrap at the bar has a silent mode (two guns pointed at its face and a stern talking-to) and allegedly knows how to mix seven-hundred-thousand interstellar drinks, so that’s a plus.

 

Nisha likes bourbon. She really likes bourbon. Straight from the bottle because she’s a big girl. Jack likes a cocktail of Menoetian vodka and a neon purple liqueur from Eden-6. It tastes like smoke and drakefruit and so much better on his lips than from his glass. He could say the same of hers, if he were the poetic type.

 

But he’s not, so he snorts instead. She takes a sip from her bottle around the purple-stained rim and he gestures to her and then to himself with a shit-eating grin.

 

“Hey,” he says, leaning over the table, “hey, so, remember when we first met -”

 

“You mean the first time I saved your ass.”

 

“- and you saved my ass, and then I - and then I hurled you into space in a metal friggin’ cargo box - remember, remember what you said?”

 

Nisha leans back, appraising him from beneath the brim of her hat. “Something about dying?”

 

“Yeah, probably, but I meant the whole line about _my_ line not working on you.” His grin grows teeth when she rolls her eyes. “You see? You see what I’m getting at here? How I called you pretty, and you were too cool to just go with it, and now, here we are.”

 

“Here we are.”

 

Jack finishes his drink, free fingers drumming on the table until he shoves his glass to the side. He rests his chin on a fist, fluttering his eyelashes. “You said that stuff didn‘t work on you, gorgeous, but it totally did.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, don‘t get cocky,” she says. Props her boots up in his lap. Wraps her fingers slowly around the neck of the bottle. Her smile is just as wolfish as his. “Or do.”

 

 

* * *

 

She leaves him for Elpis to take care of some loose ends with a few hidden purple lipstick stains on his neck. Jack tries to find it in himself to be irate, but when he calls her comm to exercise his irritation, she just snickers back.

 

“The color suits you.”

 

“Really?” he says, and turns to the windows of his office. The color doesn’t reflect well. He feels a little like a dumbass for looking at all. “I dunno, sweetheart. Always kinda thought red might be more my color. If I had to pick. Which, I mean… I don’t. For obvious reasons.”

 

“Moxxi might know something about that, if you wanted to get past the whole attempted murder thing.”

 

There’s a sour taste in his mouth now. He could probably make this real ugly real fast if he wanted to. Say some shit that might make her find a rocket back up to Helios just to wring his neck. She liked that. Angry sex was always an option.

 

But Jack just sneers at his reflection. “Nah, you know what? I think I’m gonna take your word for it. Get your ass back soon so you can, uh. Help me coordinate.”

 

“Is that what we’re calling it now? Kinky. For interior decorators and homemakers, maybe.”

 

“Ouch! A guy takes a stab at romance, Nish…”

 

“I prefer actual stabbing.”

 

“Heheh. Yeah you do.”

 

“You got real pretty eyes,” she says. And then she laughs at his silence and shuts off her comm and he’s left staring at himself in the window like half an idiot, fingertips on the dark smudges at his throat.

 

(Only half an idiot because at least he’s getting laid.)

 

 

* * *

 

“Been thinking about moving on,” she says, staring out of his window over space. She‘s bare naked and leaning against his desk, so she has his full attention. He makes a noise, a scoff that‘s less of a scoff and more of a precursor to violence. She likes it. She likes him.

 

“Yeah? Well if we‘re talking hypotheticals here, I‘ve thought about feeding myself to a skag one limb at a time through some mind-blowingly tedious board meetings.”

 

Nisha lays back over his desk, hands behind her head.

 

She’s got itchy feet. She always has. Helios was great before because, you know, endless battles. Guns blazing. Bullets and acid and Jack in her ear, agitated and demanding and hard to please and so, so _hot_. Helios is great now because sex and bourbon are on tap. She never has to worry about feeding herself, or the last time she washed her underwear, or dying alone in the wastes.

 

It’s _too_ good. Maybe she wants to die alone in the wastes.

 

She explains it just so to the sheltered, stainless steel-bred pretty boy sprawled naked in his billion dollar office. The stars are great up close. She thinks she prefers them from a wistful distance.

 

“Mmkay,” he says, skepticism coloring his tone. “How far are we talking here?”

 

“To the ends of the galaxy,” she says, drawing a hand up her stomach. “That’s wishful thinking though, isn’t it. I don’t have the pocket change for endless voyages. Just a boyfriend who does.”

 

“Yeah, well, you’d kick my ass if I told you to stay,” Jack says, almost reserved. He’s not a reserved kind of guy. She stretches out and prods his gut with her toes.

 

“I’d kick your ass if you just let me go too.”

 

He grabs her ankle and pulls. She doesn’t go sprawling off the desk or anything - it only tugs her a couple of inches. A playful kind of warning. She pokes him again the first chance she gets.

 

“Alright. Alright. At least - at least tell me you’re not thinking of goin’ back to that bandit-infested wasteland.”

 

“I would, but. You know I love danger.”

 

“Aw, babe,” he says, sliding his fingers up the meat and muscle of her calf. “Danger loves you too.”

 

 

* * *

 

So he gives her a town, because he’s a romantic, no matter what she says. He gives her a town and a badge and she takes his jacket too because she’s a greedy shit, and god, he’s so into her.

 

He gives her the town, but the real anniversary present is the knockdown, dragout shoot-em-up bandit gunfight they get into to clear it out. The fire in her eyes, the adrenaline coursing through his body, and the gunpowder scent of her has him shoving her into the nearest abandoned lean-to to give her yet another gift. And another. She actually manages to shoot a guy through the window while Jack’s inside her, and if that isn’t one of the coolest things he’s ever sort of been a part of, he’ll eat her hat.

 

The old one. The one she gives him when he gives her something new and sheriff-y. (He doesn’t hold it close the whole ride home or leave it on his desk for months before it goes up in the trophy case. Nope. That’d be gross and lovelorn and totally weird. He does sniff it from time to time though.)

 

Jack wants her to call it New New Haven for obvious reasons. She pats his cheek and has Wilhelm raise the Lynchwood sign a few days later.

 

He has a company to get back to - money to spend, employees to demean, vault hunters to kill - but he stretches out long days between rebuilding her town, killing shit, and getting fucked exactly like he isn’t going to see his girlfriend in god knows how long.

 

“You don’t have a rocket. I should get you one.”

 

She smirks at him from the other side of the pillow, sun-dark skin a stark contrast to the sheets (lilac. His choice. It suits him, after all.). She’s got more freckles now than she did on Helios. A wider smile. It’s annoying, is what it is - proof that this was for the best after all when he’d like nothing more than to decry it.

 

“Honey, you’ll be running back enough for the both of us,” she says. He narrows his eyes. Not because she sounds awfully confident about that, but because she’s right to. Asshole.

 

“Yeah, well,” he sniffs, hauling her closer by the waist, “now I’m just gonna have to buy you a rocket to spite you.”

 

“That’ll teach me a lesson,” she says, perfectly agreeable for once.

 

“Yeah, see, this is why I like you. You’re so - so understanding.”

 

“I understand you,” she croons, pinching his chin. “Isn’t that enough?”

 

He’s not wearing the mask, which, if you ask him, is better than any answer he could give. So he bites her fingers instead, and ducks down beneath the sheets to make sure that when he leaves this god-forsaken dirt hell, the taste of her will still be on his lips.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“I‘m probably gonna die out here.”

 

She sounds downright chipper about it, like that‘s something she‘s looking forward to. She probably is, the nutbag.

 

“Yeah,” he says, “probably.” He‘s not fussing with her lapels. He‘s just making sure his newly appointed sheriff looks her best for bandit-wrangling. Her badge is crooked. Might‘ve been, anyway. Point is, thanks to his not-fussing, it definitely isn‘t now. She swats at his hands away and he swats them back, tipping her new hat to the side to annoy her. She just looks cool and rakish though, so he tips it back.

 

Nisha, in turn, takes her old hat and shoves it onto his head and drags him close for a soul-damning kiss in one smooth motion. Damn, she‘s awesome. So awesome. Why‘s he leaving her on this shit orb again?

 

“Why am I leaving you on this shit orb again?” he asks when she pulls away, inspecting the lipstick stain on his mouth before she plants a second on his cheek, and a third on his collar. It‘ll be a bitch to wash out, so he just won‘t try.

 

“Because I love killing bandits, and you love me.”

 

“Yeah,” he says, “not happy about it, though.”

 

“Aww. I‘m gonna miss you too, doll. And your big, sexy airlock.”

 

“You‘re welcome to come up for that, uh, airlock anytime you‘re feeling Jacksick.”

 

“I‘m feeling a little Jacksick right now.”

 

“See, why does it sound like you‘re turning my words against me? That shit‘s clever. Don‘t make me regret it.”

 

Wilhelm makes a noise on the docking bay behind him, and Jack sees fit to ignore him for as long as he friggin‘ well pleases. Nisha taps her knuckles to his jaw, though, before she steps back.

 

“Let me know when you need something shot, big guy.”

 

“Hey.” He thinks he sounds pretty cool, despite wearing his girlfriend‘s old hat and covered in her lipstick. He slides a pair of sunglasses on to prove it. “You‘ll be the first to know. And Nish?”

 

“Jackie-boy?”

 

Jack knocks her hat to the side again. She should look at least half as cool as he does. They have a reputation to maintain. “Don‘t do that whole dying-out-here thing. Pandora doesn‘t deserve your corpse. Have some dignity and do it on Helios.”

 

She smacks his ass when he starts up the ladder. It feels a little like love and not at all like a guarantee.

 

* * *

 

“Hey,” she says over the private line of his comm once they near the docking bay of Helios, preparing their landing. “Love you too.”

 

Jack taps her hat against his smirk and ignores Wilhelm‘s sidelong glance. “Hah! Fuckin‘ weak, cupcake.”

 

“That‘s not what I heard last night, when I had my fist so far up your ass all you could say was -”

 

“Love you too, darlin‘. Miss you already. Counting the seconds, blah, blah -”

 

“‘ _Ohh_ ‘ and ’ _Miss Kadam_ ’ and ‘ _harder, fuck, more, more, what do you_ mean _there‘s no more_ ’ -”

 

“Oh no, kshh, you‘re breakshhh up kkshh -”

 

“And then you made that noise when I -”

 

“I want a divorce -”

 

“Stuck my tongue in your - wait, I‘m breaking up, _and_ you want a divorce? Playing hard to get now? Who else is gonna fist you like I do?”

 

“You‘d be surprised how many fists a guy could find if he was looking. Usually two per person.”

 

“Let me know when you find one better, honey.”

 

When Wilhelm grabs their luggage from the back, Jack clears his throat. “Hey, uh. Next time, you maybe wanna open with fisting and close with love instead?”

 

“Mmm,” she hums. Then there‘s gunfire in the background and her attention is gone. “Nah. See you ‘round, Jack.”

 

"Yeah," he says to an empty line. "Toodles."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Life goes on, until it doesn't.

 

But isn't that just the way?

 

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from TV On The Radio's “Wolf Like Me”: _Hey hey my playmate / let me lay waste to thee / burned down their hanging trees / it's hot here hot here hot here hot here_
> 
>  
> 
> Inquire about fic requests [here!](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/ask)  
> If you are so inclined, feel free to follow [my Tumblr](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/).


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